Mr. Democrat: Jim Farley, the New Deal and the Making of Modern American Politics

6. “As Maine Goes . . .”

6 “As Maine Goes . . .” By the end of Roosevelt’s ‹rst term, Jim Farley had amassed a knowledge of the Democratic Party’s nationwide operations to rival his mastery of New York State politics in the 1910s and 1920s. His productive campaign work, patronage dealings, telephone networking, and prodigious correspondence had helped him to achieve this position of command . His western trip in the summer of 1931, his role at the 1932 national convention, and his management of the 1932 presidential campaign had made him a prominent figure in the nation’s politics. His patronage dealings as postmaster general in the early New Deal further consolidated his fame, attracting substantial press and public attention. By 1936, Farley had established his reputation as a political operator of the ‹rst order. By the mid-1930s, stories about Farley’s extraordinary memory for names and faces were legion. When he correctly predicted the outcome of the 1936 presidential election, the Farley legend was secure. He was now a prophet as well as a memory man. Typical of the many stories about Farley’s memory is that told by an Iowa man who was on the reception committee that greeted the postmaster general and national chairman on one of his campaign stops as he toured the Midwest. Three years after their brief meeting, the man appeared in Washington, offering to bet that Farley would not remember him. Farley, the story goes, welcomed the challenge, greeted the man by his ‹rst name, reeled off the names of the other members of the reception committee, remembered the hotel where they had eaten lunch, recited the menu, gave an account 123 of who the speakers at the lunch were and what they had said, and then asked the ›abbergasted visitor how his children were, naming each of them in turn.1 What matters about such stories is not whether they are true in every detail—on the face of it, that seems unlikely—but that they were in circulation and had wide currency. Seeking an explanation for Farley’s position at the helm of one of the most formidable party organizations ever assembled in the United States, people ascribed to him extraordinary —almost supernatural—powers. How else could they account for the range of his in›uence? But those who knew Farley well knew better. Charles Poletti, who worked with Farley at close quarters in his capacity as lieutenant governor of New York between 1932 and 1942, pointed out that the explanation for Farley’s famous memory was really quite mundane; it owed as much to his meticulous method of record keeping and his singleminded determination always to create a good impression as it did to any innate gift. Well, I think Jim was a very good politician. He could sense situations. He was excellent as everybody knows—it’s been heralded—at remembering names of people. Yet some people don’t realize how much work went into permitting him to know these names. I know the elaborate ‹le system he had for every community, and all the people he met would then come back into a ‹le system, and if he found out that so-and-so had a son named Bill, that went on the card, and on his next trip into a community the cards of the whole community were handed to him, which he studied before he went in, and when he went in he could rattle all this off. Besides having a retentive mind he had this elaborate system that permitted him to display his retentive mind, and he had two girls that worked on this all the time in his of‹ce, keeping up-to-date in this ‹le system and card indexes on everybody he ever met.2 It was an essential part of Farley’s job to know who tens of thousands of people were. His memory for names and faces was so good because his entire approach to politics was based on keeping in touch. He simply had to know. 124 Mr. Democrat The best-selling author Dale Carnegie admired Farley’s method. In fact, in some editions of his classic How to Win Friends and In›uence People, Farley’s contact-making tips feature in the chapter called “If You Don’t Do This, You’re Headed for Trouble.” Carnegie advised readers to follow Farley’s advice: get people’s names right, ‹x information about...